Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

August 1942. Naval Air Base at Corpus Christi, Texas. Jesse Rhodes Waller, aviation ordnance mate third class, tries out a 30-caliber machine gun he has just installed in a Navy plane. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Howard Hollem for the Office of War Information.

Noon, August 1908. "Young People in an Indianapolis Cotton Mill." Uncharacteristically happy photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine, who generally seemed to prefer that his subjects scowl for the camera. View full size.

December 1943. Lynn Massman and her son Joey at the United Nations service center nursery in Washington, D.C. View full size. Medium-format safety negative by Esther Bubley for the Office of War Information.

November 1940. "Living room in farm home of John Frost, part owner of 135 acres of semi-marginal land in Tehama County, California. He raises turkeys, hogs and dairy cattle." We met the girl and her dad last week, listening to the radio. Medium format negative by Russell Lee for the FSA. View full size.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.